WASHINGTON — To remind him of some of the work done by potential Supreme Court nominee Robert L. Wilkins, all President Barack Obama has to do is look down the street from the White House to the nearly completed National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Wilkins was instrumental in advocating for the museum, which is set to open in September, quitting his job as a public defender to push for it and later serving on a presidential commission whose work led to its creation.

Now a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Wilkins has credentials that would make him an attractive nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month. A native of Muncie, Indiana, who was raised by a single mother, he graduated from Harvard Law School and spent a decade as a public defender in Washington.

As a young lawyer, Wilkins also became known for his role in a landmark lawsuit about racial profiling. The class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union came about after Wilkins and three family members were stopped by a Maryland State Police trooper in 1992 while driving back from his grandfather’s funeral and detained for a search by a drug-sniffing dog.